I've Got Dreams To Remember
by ilovethesoundofviolins
Summary: Karkat deals with his conflicted feelings about his wordy ancestor, and Kankri continues to comfort Karkat in more physical ways than before. (sequel to "If You're Dreaming")


**Author's Note: **I said I was gonna follow up If You're Dreaming with a sequel, so here it is!

It's really long, but I just have a lot of feelings about Kankri and Karkat and how similar they are and how much Kankri cares about him and yeah ;_;

* * *

"Now I'm glad that we've begun to delve into the topic of seadweller totalitarianism, because it's high time that you and I go into intimate depth about the historical context of this problematic form of oppression that has extended over tens of thousands of sweeps."

You're in a dream bubble with your ancestor again.

"As I've already reminded you, it's important to remember that when addressing the challenges faced by those who identify with 'low' echelons on the hemospectrum, you must constantly be aware of all forms of classist language that may litter your speech, as this invalidates their struggle and makes them feel oppressed by your unchecked cis-privilege—even you and I, Karkat, though we ourselves are are of 'low' blood as well. The terms 'low' and 'high' in and of themselves especially can become _extremely_ problematic when spoken too carelessly, deeply triggering for those in particular who have been ruthlessly belittled with slurs that are based on the rigidly biased stereotypes and preconceptions that have plagued our society for sweeps, which brings me about to the metaphorical 'meat' of my point, in which we will examine the exact historical, cultural, and xenobiological reasons _why_ certain colors and hues on the hemospectrum are socially constructed to be 'low' or 'high,' minding of course that no troll by birth is given the right to arrogance or tyranny because societal norms have dictated hierarchies and caste systems in which they are the 'ruling class,' and have enforced over thousands of sweeps that they are given the right to flaunt their 'highblooded' privilege over members of their race who are in fact their psychological and xenobiological equals."

God does he ever know how to _not _shut the fuck up.

For the last who-the-shit-knows-how-long, you've been sitting here listening to him and your harsh scowls and under-breath grows have turned into silent seethes and exhausted sighs.

You've been at this with him for _so long_ and he _still hasn't _let you get more than a sentence. Two sentences if you're lucky. Your interruptions have all been aggravated statements of disagreement so far, attempts to poke holes in his social-justice non-logic and make him cringe so hard that he finally clamps down on those stupefying lips of his, but all it's done is make him get even _more _wordy and preachy.

Underneath it all, you feel disappointed. You're sitting right in front of him, but it's like he can't even see you. Times on the slab of rock in the floating, dark abyss have been rough lately, with an increasingly morbid Gamzee and an unendingly exasperating Dave and a coupled-off Rose and Kanaya and a Terezi who still breaks you by acting like you don't exist, grinning at Dave and lapping at his cheek, cackling at the Mayor and scooping him into her arms, jabbing a finger across her throat at Gamzee and giving him the most dirty ashen looks you've ever had to stomach. Terezi, with her glowering red eyes and spiky black hair, the girl you lost. You can't even get her to look at you from behind those glaring red glasses, and it didn't use to hurt as much as it did before you found out about _that thing, _but now it's like a constant sore that you can't get to leave you, and it hurts.

These three, god forsaken "human years" have felt like eleven thousand sweeps to you, and mostly, lately, you've just been avoiding everyone. Cranky and tired and barking and decking yourself in the head with a book several times a day to stop the obscene amounts of sloppy-makeout projections that have been plaguing your thinkpan every day. All you see in your mind is spit and tongues, Terezi's then Gamzee's then Kanaya's then Rose's, it's like everyone on this goddamn meteor can't keep it their mouths and stop drooling over each other for more than a second. How did you, the romance expert, become the only one who _isn't _obsessed with this fleeting, end-of-the-world, we're-all-going-to-die-so-we-might-as-well-screw bullshit? Maybe 'cause you're the only one who has enough dignity or whatever to think about _more important things _than tangling up your tentabulge with a member of unsightly human genitalia, or as Dave calls them, "dicks." Or another tentabulge.

You've been thinking about important things like—like how sad you are, actually. How much you really fucking miss Sollux, and Eridan and Nepeta and even Vriska and Tavros, as much as they irritated the diarrheic shit out of you; how much you miss your _friends. _Important things like how Kanaya can tell that something's bothering you, but won't ask directly because she knows she "shouldn't meddle." It's not like you could find the words to even begin to tell her anyway, how badly you wish that Dave would do something stupid to fuck things up with Terezi, how badly you wish that he'd let her go so she'd come running back to you, needing you to comfort her and wipe away her tears like one of the heroes in your rom-coms—how badly you wish that you _didn't_ notice the new bruises on her neck recently, and wonder if they came from Gamzee.

Instead Kanaya listens to you complain about how unironic Dave actually is and how much you want to take those stupid glasses off his face and stomp them into thousands of microscopic black shards of glass, and she laughs at you but you think she can tell that you're really just bitter and in pain and jealous.

You've been thinking about important things like—like Kankri.

You thought that after the last time you two talked, about Terezi and Latula and, well, _love,_ that your next discussion, whenever it would be, would actually be more discussion and less Kankri getting off on the sound of his own heinously self-righteous voice.

You'd been sleeping more often because of it actually, as lame and needy as it made you. You'd been curling up on Gamzee's horn pile or your book pile, shifting uncomfortably until you forced yourself to drift off, cursing the dark void that your dreams offered you instead of a world where you and he could meet again.

But, as it turned out that when you showed up here this time, a mutual discussion between you two wasn't going to be the case.

Now you watch his mouth move nonstop, his long, gray tongue curling around the words and flicking them in your direction, and watch his warm, firm hands as they form explanatory gestures and occasionally crawl around the neck of his itchy sweater, and it's all making you intensely frustrated in a number of ways.

Mostly physical ways, like low curling heat in your stomach kind of ways, intrigued, baring your teeth and sparring him with your sickles kind of ways, which you are trying _extremely_ hard to bit your lip and ignore.

You've been sitting here listening to him for longer than you can remember, and your ass hurts from sitting, and you're just _tired, _and sad, and also angry, and you're wondering what the point was of you even showing up here in a dream today.

You were kinda just—hoping to get a little bit closer to him. Not be pushed away and distanced from him by another one of his _obnoxious _self-interested sermons.

Ever since the last time, you've been thinking about him, unfortunate glimpses of him that keep crawling into your conscious, his soft white eyes and red bundle of a sweater that covers him just so and his striking, descriptive hands_. _You'd never admit this to anyone ever, but you were kind of really looking forward to your next meeting with him, a lot.

You'd never admit this to anyone ever, but maybe you'd—_liked_ his attention last time. You'd _wanted_ his attention, his comfort. At the moment maybe you even needed it. It felt good to have him looking down at you protectively and telling you that _deserved_ to be loved by someone, with a love that went beyond the four quadrants. It felt good to have him touch your hand and make you feel a little less invisible than normal.

It felt so strange when you saw him again, all long limbs and smooth skin and soft hair and tranquil eyes, that you gulped and your gut did one of those eager, antsy somersaults.

But well, fuck all those sentiments with a culling fork now. Now Kankri's gone and ruined the nice feelings you'd managed to harbor towards him last dream bubble, turning your feelings back into hating the nook-oozing fuck out of him.

Currently, the two of you are situated in what would've been Kankri's respiteblock in Beforus. You've been sitting on the edge of his Recuperacoon ever since he led you here and started slathering you in monotonous monologue. You would put much more effort into looking intentionally pissed off and vapidly uninterested at your ancestor's monologue, but right now, you're much too busy curiously gazing around at your surroundings. Your wide eyes are taking in the details of the room, trying to figure out what it all says about one Kankri Vantas.

You're wondering why he still hasn't said anything about the fact that you're in his ghost-hive right now. You wish_you_ could go back to your hive in a dream bubble, or maybe even see your lusus for that matter. Sure, you only spent so much time in that dark little hive on Alternia because you were scared of being killed the second you stepped out your door, but you do kind of miss it anyway. You miss home. You miss the normalcy of it. It kind of hurts that you haven't been back there at all in your dreams, and the reality that your home planet and all the living things on it were completely destroyed still kind of stings.

You think you'd be quite moved if your dreams allowed you to go back to Alternia. But apparently, Kankri doesn't feel the same way about returning here. He doesn't even seem to be fazed by it.

Anyway, the place you're in right now, his place, is absolutely _pristine. _It's almost _sickening_ how clean it is. Everything here is so bright that it burns your eyes. The spotless steel surfaces and bare marble floors all glisten and shine. The pure white curtains and rugs are starch with bleaching-fluid. All of the furniture looks brand new, appearing to be completely unused and untouched. It doesn't even look like anyone ever lived here. It looks more like something Equius would've built for one of his soulless robots.

Kankri is a soulless robot.

There are bookshelves upon bookshelves pressed against the blindingly white walls, stretching up towards the ceiling, bearing titles that have to do with speech communication, war, history, politics, and slavery. Each and every book, thick-spined and trimmed in silver, is organized with precision, in alphabetical order, series order, numerical order, it's so neurotically methodical that it's making your thinkpan singe. There are hundreds of thousands of books everywhere you look, and part of you wants to get your grubby hands on one or two of them and read them, just out of curiosity.

Part of you also wants to start shredding the pages apart with your claws to see if this derails his attention enough to get him to _stop fucking talking, _but you refrain from that.

From where you sit, you can also tell that Kankri a couple pictures on his desk, placed in tall, symmetrical white frames, and they're the only things in the room that have remotely any personality. Mostly there are pictures of he and Porrim when they were many sweeps younger, spending time outdoors together.

He's actually smiling in all of the pictures, it seems. He rarely ever smiles.

You squint to observe the backgrounds each of the pictures, taking in how bright and lovely and welcoming the landscapes of Beforus were compared to the dangerous ones of Alternia; everything looks so lively and lush, and apparently Beforan trolls could actually leave their hives in the daytime without being scorched or blinded by their sun. Lucky them.

"Karkat, are you even listening to me?"

You hear him but his words don't register as you try to picture what Kankri must've been like at your age, when he was still alive. Probably still just as obnoxious, you figure. And just as big of a prude. And hopefully he was much uglier too, stuck in a stubby, shabby awkward phase like yourself, all coarse hair and frown lines and awful, toothy overbites, instead of long and lean with wavy hair and striking—

"_Karkat._"

You snap your gaze up at him, at the harsh, scolding tone that his voice just took on. It surprises you.

He has his arms crossed tight and his eyes are deathly serious and he's practically _pouting _like a two sweep old.

You groan in chafing annoyance.

"_What,_" you deadpan, mocking his tone.

Now he sighs at you, a stern, impatient little huff like he thinks he's your lusus or something.

"I'm afraid that since you appear to have _missed _our entire little history lesson just now, I'm going to have to begin again," Kankri tells you. He hardly skips a beat as he starts the whole thing over word for word, and fucking hell does he actually have these rants _memorized_?

"When the incessant struggle began about ten thousand sweeps ago, and the ancient seadwellers, under the rule of the Great Empress in the so-called 'golden days,' attacked the landwellers' naval fleet, led by the Great General Aquarius, there was a—"

"Don't give a fuck."

Kankri stops.

His mouth hangs open slightly. He looks startled.

"_Excuse_ me?" he scoffs.

You gulp.

It worked. You have his attention.

"Don't—give—a—fuck," you repeat yourself, starkly.

He stares. He doesn't blink.

Though Kankri's expression remains solemn, you can tell from his harshening gaze that you're starting to provoke him.

_Finally._

Better than than being ignored, you think, as you shift uncomfortably on the ridge of his Recuperacoon.

God, you really can't take him looking at you like that for very long. You dart your eyes to the floor and cross your arms, irritably, nervously.

"You should really tag your blatant, self-seeking disability to empathize with anybody else's experience but your own with a trigger warning," Kankri snaps at you suddenly, and you cringe. "Not only is it highly offensive and a_wayward_ display of your ableist, cisromantic, cisblooded, male-identifying privilege, but it's also the kind of aggressive and egocentric behavior that my revolutionary of a future self would've engaged in when he was…"

God, it turns out that you fucking _hate _the way he sounds when he's all riled up like this. It's even worse than the sound of his calm nonsensical rambling. You can't take this anymore. You feel forced to resort to measures of the physical sort to stop this absurdity.

You stand to your feet, suddenly. Kankri stops short, mid sentence. You approach his slender figure, grappling with your own calloused fists and clenching them. He flinches. He reacts to you with just the _slightest _bit of fear, and it thrills you to see it tense up and down his body like that. He steps back with caution, and even though you're smaller than him, you must intimidate him somehow. Knowing this only edges you on.

You close in the distance between you two again, taking two steps towards him. This time instead of flinching, Kankri clears his throat and stands up even taller, as if to best you. When you get just inches from him, he swallows and crosses his arms even tighter across his middle, staring down at you with sniping amounts of condescension.

"Your constant displays of ignorance and indifference are _highly _problematic, Karkat," he begins again, sighing. "I don't understand why you continue to…"

Ugh, you're watching his mouth move again, god damn it. Now that you're so close to him you can't help it, you don't get what your feelings are doing. When he shuts his eyes for a beat your eyes flicker down and scan him, scan his jawline and chin and broad, wiry chest, the warm, red, woolen fabric that's stretched taut across it, and—

"I'm trying to educate you and _save you,_" Kankri's mouth explains, snapping your eyes back up towards it, "so that you _don't_ end up making the same over-ambitious and completely-preventable mistakes that _he _did—"

God. Shut. Up.

"If you don't want my help, even though you damn well _should_ and should feel _grateful _to have received it at all_, _as I have lived s_weeps_ longer than you and am the _only _other accessible member of your blood kind that you may ever get to meet in your lifetime, then you are truly at a loss of monumental proportions, and you should be sorry."

That's it.

A jolt of frustration twinges through your thinkpan and suddenly, you yank on the collar of his sweater with both of your hands, thrust him into yourself, and cover his mouth with yours, quickly biting his lips shut. Hard.

Shocked, Kankri muffles an indignant noise into your mouth. He groans boisterously in protest, tries to pry his lips out from under your sharp teeth and pull himself from your grip. But he can't.

You open your eyes into his, growl at him, and purse your lips even harder, enforcing your point.

You're not letting go. Until _he _learns his lesson.

He goes wide-eyed, still, and silent.

And suddenly the hammering of your heartbeat is so loud that it's damn near terrifying.

All you know next, as the blood rushes to your face and hands and abdomen, is that you can _taste him_, all warm and wet on your lips. He tastes likes a mixture of bitter spit and just a_ twinge_ of blood from your bite; you take a deep breath, flutter your eyes shut, and frown, turning your head a little and sliding one of your lips between his. You're so intrigued by this taste, wanting more of this taste, not thinking about who this is and what this means and just soaking in the fact that oh god you're actually touching him, you're actually touching someone, and it's not pale, you don't even know how fucking red or black it is, your thinkpan is swimming and flickering back and forth between the two so fast it could give you a seizure.

He grumbles weakly and his already-swelling lips part just slightly to let you in. A heated red blush ignites itself across your face.

Your stomach lunges as you dizzily and faintly start to suck on his pliant lower lip, feeling it along the ridge of your tongue. You're beginning to get thinkpan-numbingly lost in the feeling of someone's else mouth, of _Kankri's_ mouth, on yours right now, and you're much less frustrated and hating your ancestor now than you are painstakingly nervous, you feel so blunt and out of your element and he's so much older than you and you literally have no idea what you should be doing, but your restraint against completely sucking his face off is fringing on non-existent.

You suck harder on his lip and pull at it with your teeth, abrupt and harsh and he hisses. You release it with an undignified squelching noise, and then, quickly, without thinking, you fling your hands up to the sides of his hot face, claws bared and scratching him, and capture his mouth in yours again, prying your dry tongue between his lips and writhing it around aimlessly. Kankri actually _groans_ from the back of his throat and melts against you a little, as you clumsily clash your mouths together and your whole body pathetically trembles.

But suddenly, in an indignant outburst of self-realization, Kankri violently shoves you away with both of his hands.

You stumble backward and he spatters, feverishly wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his ugly red sweater over and over, leaving you stiff and staring into his bulging, offended white eyes.

"Blegh!" he yelps. "KARKAT!"

Oh god.

"You should really learn to tag your incest with a trigger warning!"

Oh god oh god oh god.

Your breath is heavy and bated and you're suddenly hit with a ton block of fear and self-disgust to the chest.

_You're sick. _You just kissed your pre-scratch self and tasted him in your mouth, tasted _yourself_ in your mouth, and you just _liked it, _you repulsive piece of incestuous fuck.

Oh god oh god oh god oh god.

"I cannot _believe _the _audacity _you must have!" Kankri shouts at you, and you swear you've never even seen_your _own face get that red. Your heart is slamming against your chest as you stare at your ancestor, who's now spewing a muffled red mile of a speech at you, so babbling and rapid and dull against your ears that you don't recognize a word of it.

You feel stunned at your own actions. Sick to your stomach and wobbly on your feet as you watch him gallivant and protest. You really _really _wanna run right now away and hide, you're so pitifully mortified, but the way that he's overbearingly flaunting his disgust for you right now is making you so upset that you can't budge.

And when you get upset, you get angry.

"You wouldn't shut your shit-spewing seed flap, so I had to make you!" you cut him off abruptly.

He stares at you, flabbergasted.

"By shoving your _tongue _down my _protein chute_?" he outbursts.

"Fuck you!" you spit; your anger starts to subside and hurt starts to crawl around in your chest, making itself painfully uncomfortable. "My tongue was nowhere _near _your protein chute!"

Kankri scoffs and begins to shuffle and pace around the room.

"You are _beyond help_, Karkat," he blurts out, frantically shaking his head. "I don't even know what to do with you!"

You open your mouth to speak, but all you do is produce an embarrassing quip of a squeak in response that's supposed to sound like,

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Your eyes are starting to burn and sting and Kankri's back is turned towards you now.

You try again to make your voice do the talking thing, but nothing happens. You stand in your dead pre-scratch self's respiteblock and feel more alone than ever.

You don't get the chance to look him in the eye again before everything starts to vanish before you, and quickly melt into black.

Then you're waking up with a jolt as the horn pile squeaks underneath you, and you're covered in a thin sheath of sweat, the taste of him still faint on your lips.

( )

You don't know when you're going to see him next, but now you're hoping that it's, well, um—never.

After your blunder of a forced kiss in the last dream bubble, you wallow in your own disgraceful self-embarrassment for several long, sleepless nights, doing anything and everything you can to keep yourself from drifting off: pinching yourself so hard that you bruise, lying on your back on the floor and counting the cracks on the ceiling, and staying up and being the awkward-third-wheel-device as Rose and Kanaya read together by the light of Kanaya's glow. Thinking about how you practically assaulted him with your mouth makes you really, really hate yourself, and you can't imagine how you're ever going to face him again without feeling ashamed, and without him starting up a _whole 'nother lesson _about, trigger warning, sexual harassment, and the strictly set-up boundary-lines of celibacy. Or something.

The point is, you feel _really_ bad, and you wish you'd never done it. He may be obnoxious and you may have felt like you hated him, but he didn't deserve it.

You get by forcing yourself to stay awake for a while, but before long you're unbearably. You get so cranky that every time Dave so much as breathes in your vicinity you pretty much viciously snap at him.

You almost get into a furious argument with him (and well, it's actually only furious from your side, and derisive on his), but thankfully, Gamzee actually does his proper shoosh-papping duties before you get that far, for once. You don't really thank him because he's hard to be around too lately, and once you announce to the group of douchefucks that you can't take being awake with any of them any longer, you stomp out of the main room and give Terezi one last glance, hoping she glances back at you, _just a little, _that's all you need.

And she doesn't.

You clunk down on your pile of books in the darkened hallway and are so mentally exhausted that you knock out almost instantly.

And when you awake, you are at the foot of the golden staircase.

Alone.

Or so you think.

( )

"Karkat!"

Fuck.

You jump inside your skin and your stomach plummets in panic as Kankri's voice bellows from somewhere behind you.

You turn. He's coming down the stairs at you quickly, and you're already freaking out in anticipation.

He's either charging at you out of anger because of the last time you all but violated his pure little mouth, or he's actually—actually—excited to see you?

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," Kankri assures you once he reaches you, out of breath. "It's just that I've been—well, I've been waiting for you here ever since you left."

You frown.

Oh?

You think you've forgotten how to breathe a little.

He's waiting been for _you_? Even after _you _were the deranged little piece of shit who'd screwed things up so badly last time?

Your heartbeat is suddenly rampant.

"Um." Your voice is gruff from disuse; you clear your throat and your eyes scan his restful face in open wonder for a moment, then timidly dart to the ground. "Why…"

"Because," Kankri answers, simply. "I've been wanting to apologize to reacting so harshly to you last time."

What does he even have to apologize for.

"Really, I should've been more considerate," Kankri tells you. "I didn't realize at the time that while I _was_ giving you important and valid information during our lesson, it was utterly negligent of me to disallow you to speak your mind as well. As it—always is."

You look up at him again.

"In addition to that, I realize now, after sitting for a while and thinking about it and thoroughly checking my privilege," Kankri continues, "that towards the end of our meeting, I was—hashing out a considerable amount of—kink shaming, towards you."

Did he just say _kink_?

"As an advocate of social justice I try not to, in spite of my personal brand of celibacy, well_, cringe_ in the face of some of the kinks that I come across in conversation," he goes on, and clearly at this point he must be able to see how ruddy your face has become in his presence, "and for future reference Karkat, my kink triggers include but are not limited to, bondage, depilation, autofellatio, asphyxiation, watersports, scat, masochism…"

You have no fucking idea what any of that means.

"I have no fucking idea what any of that means."

He stops short. The faintest trace of a chuckle escapes his lips.

"Oh. Well, that's normal; many people are unaware of their kinks and corresponding triggers until they are physically subjected to them," Kankri informs you. "For instance I get the feeling that you were unaware of a…certain_ kink _of yours before our last dream bubble, but…"

His voice trails off and his eyes search yours for an answer.

"But then again," he starts up when you can't respond, his gaze dropping to the floor, "maybe _that kink _has_always _been a deviant segment of your psyche, one that you've been trying to snuff out for sweeps, and being physically tempted with the chance to—explore it, made you—act out in ways that were—problematic."

He still hasn't gotten to his point.

Your heart is beating so hard now that you can feel it pulsing in your head and it just makes you at even more of a loss for words.

"I'm talking about your kiss," he states plainly, sensing your confusion.

Your eyes go wide and your stomach all but retches.

"Ohgodno I don't wanna talk about that," you grumble, blushing. "In fact, fuck that, I'm not going to."

As you turn to walk away from him, Kankri grasps your hand, tight.

"Wait."

You pause.

"I didn't—" Kankri begins from behind you, clearly sounding flustered. "I wasn't expecting that—when you—kissed me, it—" he sighs. "I was only so upset because it caught me off guard, is all."

His grip around your hand softens. His fingers are suddenly flexing themselves within your own, his thumb effortlessly and soothingly tracing the base of your thumb, making your breath catch in your throat and making chills rise on your skin.

Somehow those hands can appease you_ so_ much quicker than his words can; you wonder why he doesn't use them on you more often.

And then Kankri says, lower,

"I hadn't known that you were sexually attracted to me."

And, _oh._

Your tear your hand away from his and rapidly sink in on yourself.

"Mother of bulgesucking _fuck_, Kankri, can you please not—_say it _like that?" you cringe, smacking your hand to your face in embarrassment, turning away from him further.

"Say it like what?"

"God, okay," you groan. You turn around to face him. "I know it was incest, you think I don't know that? I get it, I'm a sick nubby-horned fuck who wants his alternate self to grope him suggestively or something. Now excuse the constipated shit out of me while I drown in myself in my own wallowing shame, and then proceed to off myself somewhere with a hanging noose device."

"Triggered!" Kankri exclaims. "Tag your suicide shaming!"

"Oh my god, I give up. I'm leaving."

"Wait, don't go, please—"

"It's not like it matters anyway!" you grunt at him. "You have your stupid chastity vow for retard-wrigglers, and you can't even touch me."

There's a beat of silence and Kankri doesn't move.

"I know," he says, softly.

He sighs and you stare at each other.

"But that doesn't mean that—you can't touch yourself."

Wait.

_What._

He exhales calmly and looks you dead-straight in the eyes as he asks you,

"Have you ever masturbated before, Karkat?"

And your eyes all but rupture out of their sockets.

"_What_?"

He sighs.

"Masturbation, taboo though it is on certain moral and religious levels, is actually a common and healthy practice for trolls of all ages and lifespans," Kankri resumes matter-of-factly. "I may have taken an oath of relative chastity, but even I am an advocate of self-stimulation whenever a certain situation may call for it."

You stare at him completely wide-eyed and slack-jawed. You'd have to slap yourself in the face right now in order to produce anything remotely coherent.

He's done it.

He's officially broken your brain.

"Who—the _fuck _asks something that?" you suddenly blunder. "Fuck you with the blunt end of my sickle if you think I'm answering that."

Kankri raises his eyebrows at your little outburst, but remains relatively calm.

"There's nothing wrong with a little self-pleasure," he resumes, closing his eyes. "Masturbation is actually the safest of all sexual interactions, besides celibacy of course, and my extensive reading on the subject has informed me that there are actually a number of medical and psychological benefits to masturbation, including the lowered probability of a number of cancerous diseases, no pun on our sign intended."

He's still holding your hand in his, gently, just so, and damn his hands are so incredibly soft that they keep on _doing things_ to your thinkpan.

Bad things.

You're heart is racing and you're looking at him and trying to fight the fact that you kind of think he's _offensively_gorgeous and yes, god shitting damn it, you're sexually attracted to your wordy, lanky, red-woolen ancestor, and the question he asked you, whether you've jacked off or not, still burns in your brain.

"Fuck, okay."

He waits expectantly and you blush furiously.

"I've tried it, a couple times," you admit to him in a huff, "but it doesn't—I can't make myself—I can't—urghff!" You smack yourself in the forehead with your spare hand. "It just doesn't work."

Kankri glances away gently and looks like he's trying not to _smile at you._

"Well," he says soothingly, finding your eyes again. "Would you like it to?"

Your mouth goes completely dry.

"I've noticed that you have a lot of unresolved tension," Kankri tells you. "Tension that could at least partially be relieved by—you relieving yourself."

Oh.

"I could—" he says tentatively, "teach you, if you wanted?"

_Oh._

Your jaw falls completely slack. You're floored.

"If this is something you're uncomfortable with or if I've triggered you in anyway, please tell me," Kankri goes back on himself quickly. "By no means do I intend to make you feel pressured or harassed, you should know that by now, but I was just thinking that if I could show you that you are—"

"Yes."

God.

Yes.

Kankri stares at you curiously, and then you watch as his lips part in sudden realization.

"Yes?" he repeats you eagerly.

You're shaking all over due to the fuckton of nervousness that just shot through your body right now, but somehow, you find it in you to nod feverishly.

But you have no idea how on Alternia he's going to be able to _teach you _something like _that_.

He goes and sits down on the tiled floor with his back against the first gold step, his legs slightly open with a space left for you. He exhales, gazes up at you, heavy-lidded, and says calmly,

"Come here."

You try not to look so fucking eager as you instantly obey. You sit between his legs and first sort of marvel in the fact that your short, stubby legs are brushing against his inner thighs. Tentatively, you lean back and press into him, settling into his chest, keeping your arms crossed.

"Is this okay?" Kankri asks from behind you, wrapping his long arms around you on either side.

You stare down at his arms and swallow at their stunning proximity and god you can't believe you're actually about to do this right now, whatever this is.

"Yeah," you reply, gruff, tense. "Whatever."

The only time you've ever "gotten action," from anybody, whatsoever, was the very few times you and Terezi fumbled around with each other, when you were both five sweeps. There were also a few long and drawn out pale kisses from Gamzee, if those could even counted, but he's an even shittier kisser than you are, so they probably don't. And there was also that one time you kissed Kanaya's corpse while bawling hysterically, but that most fucking definitely does not count.

First, as you sit between his legs, Kankri takes your hands in his, almost instantly soothing your nerves this way. Your heart skips a beat and you feel breathless. You notice Kankri keeps his claws trimmed, unlike you, as he takes the top of your hands in his palms, dances his fingers across them, taps them and rubs them, and strokes them admiringly.

"You have strong hands," he tells you quietly.

"Oh," you mutter depreciatively. "Yeah, from my training, I guess." You shrug and then suddenly feel uncomfortable. "Why, is there something wrong with them, or—"

"_Shhh_."

Huh.

Never in a million sweeps did you think Kankri was ever gonna be the one to shush _you._ You roll your eyes in annoyance, but you're still very much breathless as you watch Kankri play with your hands, as you watch him proceed to hold you gently by the wrist, in order to guide you for the next step.

"Now, the key to going about this is to not think too hard about what you're doing," he tells you. He then proceeds to sound like some kind of masturbation specialist or something as he goes on, although can you really be surprised when he seems to consider himself specialist on _everything_?

"When we touch ourselves, we purposefully avoid the places that we know we like," he tells you. He begins to guide your hand down your own chest, tracing patterns on top of your sweater and making you tense up at your own touch. "Often times it's strange for us to be completely in control of our own physical pleasure. We want to hold back on ourselves because that full and total control, well, it scares us. It's something we're so unused to. I tend to think that something you've struggled with, Karkat, is never feeling like you've really had any control over any of yourselves, and I know what that can be like."

He skims your hand down your sternum, makes your fingertips glide between your ribcage and lightly scratch at your stomach. You gulp.

"Frustrating."

The blood rushes to your head and causes it to pound loudly.

"Why don't you tell me where you like to be touched?" Kankri says.

Your mouth lets a humiliating sigh slip from your lips as he runs your hands across your body, and god you feel like curling in on yourself right now, but he surrounds you and there's no way you can hide from him. He has you gutted open.

"Fuck—I don't know." You groan. "I mean it's not like I've ever had people lining up to grope me, or my slimy, mutated bulge sa-ack—"

He dips your fingertips along the very lowest part of your abdomen and your voice breaks as you arch into the touch. Your hips shift up, your heart skips several beats, you slightly keel back into him,

And he can tell he's just affected you.

"You do know," he says. "Tell me."

"M-my stomach," you grumble pathetically. "Like that, what you just did."

He uses one of your hands to lift the fabric of your sweater a little, and with the other he continues runs your fingers across your sensitive skin, and you watch him. It almost feels like your hand's not even _attached_ to you, with how sure all of the movements are. All of _his _movements are. He's right. You'd never be able to arouse yourself like this all on your own, and it feels _so_ weird knowing that you're so helplessly affected by the feel of your own hand, but he keeps doing it and you can't help the way it unhinges you.

You can just barely begin to feel your bulge pulsing a little between your legs when all of a sudden, you feel his lips brush against the ridge of your ear.

You practically squirm and let out an embarrassing breathy noise and a wave of flushed heat washes over you.

"Watching me will only psyche you out," Kankri tells you in your ear, in a scolding whisper.

God. Letting him tell you what to do is shitty and obnoxious, but he _is _your teacher and so far, hell, this is a lesson that you couldn't bear to tear yourself away from now. Not now that he's suckered you and reeled you in, now that he's flattening your palm against your waistline and using your other hand to tease the warm skin of your chest beneath your sweater.

So you shut your eyes.

And after a while he's got you half-writing against him, sinking and sighing against his back, and then before you know it he's whispering something about you starting to sweat, and then he winds up pulling your dark sweater up, off, and over your head.

You weren't expecting to be so half naked so soon.

Uneasily, you settle back into him with your arms crossed over yourself, tight— covering up your dryness, your dark patches, your ugly, red grub scars, your unsightly stab wound from Jack, all of it. Everything. Gently, Kankri kisses the top of your head, untangles your arms, takes your hand up your bare chest, dragging it across your collarbones, dragging it back down again in slow sweeps, using your claws to slightly scratch you.

And you hate the fact that he's seeing more of you than you've shown to anybody who wasn't _her, _but you close your eyes once more and try to imagine that you're safe. Try to imagine that he's keeping you warm and safe.

You close your eyes and try to imagine that it's _his_ hand instead of yours, but the problem with that it is that his hands would be so much smoother, not rough and sharp and calloused like yours. It's practically the definition of unfair the way he's teasing you right now. So close to touching you, but making you do it instead. Stupid idiotic vow of purity. He slips your fingertips dangerously low beneath the band of your jeans and your breath hitches, your bulge reacts to the stimulus nearby by slipping the head of its tendril out of its sheath. Fluid begins to just barely dampen the front of your pants.

Fuck it's so humiliating how turned on you're getting from this.

"Is there anywhere else you like to be touched, Karkat?" He bites the tip of your ear and then teases the puncture with his tongue and you practically whine and curse under your breath.

"Do I really have to say it?" you manage.

He lets go of your hands and circles a thumb around the button of your jeans while his other hand rests on your hip, dangerously close to the now-noticeable tent in your jeans.

You realize what has to happen next, so you open your eyes and start to take down your zipper.

But then you pause.

You can't see his eyes. You can't see his eyes and it makes you so ruthlessly insecure and nervous all of a sudden and you hate and realize just how much power he has right now.

What if he's just doing this to laugh at you? What if he's just trying to humiliate you? What if once he sees your—parts—he rejects you or calls you a freak or does any number of fucking humiliating and oh god, you can't do this, you can't do this.

You sit up and push him off of you and zip your pants up with flighty determination.

"Karkat?" Kankri questions.

"You're getting some kind of sick fucking joke out of this aren't you?" you snap unevenly at him, panicking, caving in on yourself, and covering yourself with your arms. "That's why you wanted to sit behind me right, so you could get a big fucking laugh out of watching me fail to fondle my bulge junk in front of you like a shit-guzzling nook-wreaking self-cesting pervert."

It's silent, too silent, for what's almost a moment too long.

But then he speaks to you.

"Karkat," he says, gently. "No."

You turn over your shoulder. You glance at him anxiously.

"Actually," he says again, staring back at you innocently, "I did it so that you didn't feel so on the spot. Would you rather be face to face, looking me in the eye?"

Even just the thought of that, the thought of his eyes raking themselves down you as you touched yourself,_by _yourself, sounds _heaps_ more embarrassing.

"No." You turn back around, cross your arms tighter over yourself, and cringe. "No, no, no, fuck no."

You can practically hear the smile in his voice when he says,

"I didn't think so."

He sighs, and the sound of it makes you go a little weak inside.

"I did it this way so that you would be more comfortable." He pauses, and when he speaks again his voice bears a layer of sadness that you never really realized was there before. "I'm doing this for you, you know, Karkat. I know that you perceive me as unfeeling and preachy, but—all I really want is to help you grow, and—help you heal. You don't have to feel embarrassed about your body in front of me. Okay? I'm not going to hurt you. I never will. I promise."

You wonder if he really, truly means that.

Because if he does, you think that's probably the most that anyone has ever said about them caring for you, ever.

If he does, you think you might pathetically be halfway in love with him.

Rather needily, you scoot back between his legs and lean back against him again, the wool of his sweater itching your skin.

He gently touches your forearm with his both of his own hands and drags his soft fingers all the way up to your shoulders. You melt against his chest and sigh and try not to make another one of those humiliating moans again, as he caresses his fingers all the way up your neck and whispers in your ear you that it's okay, that he's got you.

So you move on to the next step.

Your shaky fingers find the button and the zipper again and pop them both open. You shove your pants down with little to no grace and wriggle your jeans most of the way down you dry, gray legs, leaving them pooled at your ankles.

Under the pressure of Kankri's gaze, your half-sheathed bulge is half-hard at best. When it comes into contact with the cool air, when you realize that oh wow you're actually _naked _in Kankri's arms right now, it stiffens and flicks itself about for traction, seeking a mass to wrap its single tendril around.

It's almost foreign to watch and feel it move, like—like it's actually _alive._ It's slightly horrifying. You're freaked out and you kind of want to turn away, you feel dirty and perverted for staring at it, like you're intruding on someone_else's_ privacy.

Like this part of you, the part related to sex and pleasure, couldn't ever plausibly be a part a part of your own body.

You, Karkat Vantas, are in no way _sexy. _You're awkward, and ugly, and an unsightly mutant, and why would anybody want to look at you like this?

Blocking out the fact that Kankri _must be_ staring at it behind you, you wince and nervously offer your tentabulge your hand, waiting for it to latch on and quickly you try to recall the last time you even saw this thing.

You fail to remember, then all of a sudden Kankri is touching you again.

His fingertips start by wrapping themselves around your ribcage, and skirting themselves across your sensitive grubscars and giving them a gentle massage. You arch against as he drags those hands up and down your chest again, and from there they dance to the base of your hairline, your neck, your shoulders, your stomach, your inner thighs, one after the other, places that are seemingly innocent; the tension makes your insides scream and your outsides tremble, and he uses touches so feather light that as you close your eyes and your brows furrow, you feel like they're almost not there at all.

He doesn't ever touch your bulge, and the more aroused you become, the more it begins to twinge wildly at the lack of friction and attention it's getting, slicking out more fluid from its sheath, the oversensitive tip wriggling itself around two of your fingers and constricting itself tight, making you have to fight hard to control the shocked gasp that comes from the back of your throat.

Behind you, Kankri surprises you by sucking on the ridge of your ear again, this time going as far to run his tongue down the entire shell. You whine and arch your back into him and your hips lift, but he holds you down with his hands. Your bulge constricts even tighter, making your body twitch and your toes curl, and as the sensation rattles itself up and down your body, your claws hitch into his jeans for purchase.

"What do you usually think about when you touch yourself?" Kankri asks, low in your ear.

You gulp around the lie in the back of your throat.

"N-nothing," you wince aloud, to Kankri. "Nothing that isn't—fuck—nothing that isn't morbidly pathetic—"

Your mind flickers back to the few little times that you tried. Shamefully curled in on yourself, alone in the dark on the meteor, a finger tentatively circling your tentabulge's sheath, you'd thought about the way Terezi would kiss you with that mouth of hers, thought about the peeks of her body she'd let you steal when you were younger. You thought about the days you'd never get back and it only crushed your spirits, made you more frustrated and upset and after a minute, you and your disappointed bulge had always decided to call it quits.

"Do you think about her, then?" he asks you.

Back in the now, the sweet sounds you'd overheard her make with Gamzee echo inside your thinkpan, and god you_ hate _your sick subconscious more than ever right now for wanting to get off on them. It's wrong and selfish and she'd hate it and you're wrong.

Kankri's hands jut down your hip bones and your bulge abruptly tightens around your fingers, sending tense surges of pleasure up your spine and making you exhale strangled variations of curse words.

"Motherofsweetwrithing_fuck _can we please not talk about Terezi right now—" you manage at him.

You give your bulge a hard squeeze with your palm and it pulses violently against your hand; you have to clench down on your lip with your fangs to keep yourself from crying out. Your hand down sinks and you curl your fingers around your bulge's base, gulping and clenching your eyes even tighter.

Trying to forget where you are, forget that you're on the spot, and forget that these are Kankri's arms that you feel tensing around you, you give your bulge a few experimental tugs and practically hiccup and shiver in response.

You swear you can feel Kankri hold you closer to him, as if to absorb your reactions and keep you warm.

You start to build some kind of erratic rhythm with your hand as heat pools in your belly. Your bulge constricts writhes against your hand, beginning to drip fluid from its slits. You twist your wrist accidentally on the upstroke and growl at the heated shockwave it sends all the way up your torso, and as you continue to pump yourself you can practically feel the tension physically clawing its way out of your body.

"You really don't give yourself enough credit," Kankri whispers to you now, breath teasing the shell of your ear, and you're suddenly reminded of the errant reality that he's watching all of this right now. "You went sweeps hiding yourself away from the world out of fear, but—you look lovely like this, Karkat. With this color all over you."

You're suddenly reminded of how naked you are right now; you open your eyes and stare down at yourself in a haze that feels unreal, at your gray skin stained in a sea of blotchy red from your chest down to your thighs, and it's ugly. It's ugly, you've always thought it was ugly, the way you flush anywhere from pink to dark red at the drop of a hat, but Kankri says it's _lovely _and it stirs something in your chest and wow, that really, really does something for you. You feel yourself getting more turned on as his words splay themselves about inside your heart.

"You'll be told all your life by social constructs that your blood is disgraceful," Kankri continues, "but I promise you, you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Especially with me."

His warm words hypnotize you, wrap around you like a lover's embrace. You know that it's just _Kankri_, just another scratched-out version of yourself, but something about what he's saying, in his voice that sounds like yours, is making your walls crumble down.

You want him to be the one stroking that's your bulge _so bad,_ but the closest he gets is when his fingertips tease just below your base, grazing the sensitive gaps where your groin meets your thighs. Then his hand sweeps down and ghosts your nook, two fingers hovering over the opening that's wet with fluid, and it makes you lose your mind because goddamnithejustwon'tshovethemin, you'd impale yourself down so hard on those fingers if he just would.

You should be shocked by the filthy things your mind is coming up with right now, the filthy things you wish your pre-scratch self would do to you, but god you can't help it.

Who knew that exploring your own body with yourself was going to be so intoxicating.

You stroke yourself harder, rougher, faster, feel the first shock wave of orgasm wash over you as you fluids slick and spill out from over and under your fist. Your hands are messy and covered in red liquid, it leaves a slick, sheer coating pooling on your abdomen, and as he spreads his palms up and down your thighs and caresses your hips, it begins to coat his fingers and the top of his hands.

"I-I'm sorry," you try to tell him as you keep jacking off. "It's really fucking disgusting and it's getting everywhere, I'm so sorry—"

"No. Don't be."

This time instead of reacting in silence to your noise, Kankri groans in a sharp intake of breath and you can feel the way his chest constricts behind you.

He's starting to come unraveled too.

"Don't be, it's alright, Karkat, just—m_hm_—just keep going—"

His voice is breathy and ragged and erratic. He digs his fingertips harder into your thighs and then your hips, palms them down as they try to lift themselves off the floor, messily leaving kisses and soft bites along the freckled skin of your shoulder, and it just makes you lose yourself in him even further. He exhales shakily and holds you close to him, ruts against you gently and tells you you're a good boy, and you can't believe that _you're the one _that's making him come undone like this, what the fuck ever happened to the 'vow of chastity' well who the fuck cares, you don't ever want him to let go of you, ever, ever again.

Your chest is flushed and open, you're splayed out in his lap and sinking back against him, elbow knocking into his forearm as you continue to quickly work your bulge. Your thighs tense and knees buckle and you feel like you're going to come unscrewed any second now, but there's just one problem—

"We don't—" you try and vocalize, "g-uhh, we don't have a—"

"It doesn't matter here." With a smooth and perfect hand Kankri wipes the hair from your sweating forehead and caresses your cheekbone with his thumb, cradling your face. "It doesn't matter in your dreams. Keep going for me, okay? You're almost there."

You're hardly in control of your hand anymore as your fist rapidly strokes up and down your bulge. Your head lulls back against his shoulder and you groan unabashedly because _fuck _your body feels like it's on fire and he drags his lips across your neck and just barely grazes the skin with the sharp points of his teeth and god you're not gonna hold out like this much longer and—

When you feel yourself reaching your climax you cry out and shake, and your hand lets go of your bulge but Kankri quickly grips it, forcing it back and around yourself to carry you out to 'til you finish; he slicks your hand up and down in quick, heavy, relentless motions, creating friction and heat and covering both of you in even more warm fluid.

"Oh god oh god oh god, Kankri, fuck, please—"

The rest of your words turn into mangled streams of curses in Alternian, rapid, spitfire and messy as they spill from your tongue, and then there's a boneless sinking feeling and your orgasm pulses, leaves you trembling and panting, your heel kicks out and everything goes black as your bulge stiffens and squirts, hot red fluid pouring out of your pulsing member, spilling all over your naked lap.

"Good," you can hear Kankri muttering against the sweat-slicked skin of your neck. "Good, that's it—"

He slows down your strokes as you come down from your climax, coaxing the rest of your genetic material out and then slowly letting go of your hand.

As you pant for breath, your heart pulsing vibrantly and bright red chest heaving up and down, up and down, you half-open your eyes and let yourself slump against his chest. Your head rests on his shoulder and Kankri's hands drag up and down your thighs, curly gently around your waist, and then come to rest on top of yours. He nudges his chin against the side of your face and you exhale turn your head so that your lips faintly graze his jaw.

"How," is all you can raspily whisper at first.

Kankri squeezes your hands a bit and you think you can feel him smile.

"How what, Karkat?"

"How the_ fuck _are you celibate?" you grumble.

He laughs a little bit and you can feel the bounce of his chest, but he doesn't actually answer you.

It's then that you realize he never actually touched your bulge himself, once.

He gestures for you to sit up for a moment. You do so and turn 'round to look at him, and _oh_. Kankri looks out of breath and debauched, and his eyes are somehow brigther, and oh god he has a _huge _fucking wet spot at the front of his jeans.

It's even spread to his inner thighs and leaked through his thick, red sweater.

You stare at it and swallow hard as he sits and runs his hands through his hair, and when he proceeds to stand you whip your eyes up out of secondhand embarrassment, and pretend like you never even saw it.

He doesn't even address it, and neither do you.

"I have a feeling you're going to wake up soon," Kankri says.

You stand up quickly. You're suddenly cold as the sweat on your body cools and you're in a rush to pull your pants back up over your bare ass, find the sweater that he discarded and throw pull it back down over your head.

He watches you as you redress and that lovely, striking, and oh-so consistent stare will probably never cease to make you red.

"Um," you say now, tangling your hand in your hair self-consciously.

"Don't worry," Kankri says, smiling faintly. "If you return to me in a bubble again, I won't require that our lesson plan follow this same suite."

You didn't even know if that's what you'd wanted to hear, but a weight lifts off your chest and you exhale.

"Wait," you say, frowning. "If?"

His smile fades a bit.

"It's not always a guarantee that you and I will see each other," Kankri answers, sadly. "After all, I'm dead. I actually do a whole lot of nothing in here unless chance decides to grace me with a gift in the form of you."

And now you're sort of sad too.

"Well," you mumble. "I'm gonna be stuck on that boulderfuck of a meteor for however much longer three human years last. If I keep sleeping I'll have to see you again, right?"

Kankri is suddenly stepping towards you, then, and pulling you in for an embrace with him.

You tense up at first in a little bit of shock, but then you can't help it and you let him wrap his arms around you. You wraps yours back and exhale and shut your eyes.

He's so warm. You don't want to let him go now.

"I hope so," Kankri says now.

And when he lets go of you, you feel it start to happen. He steps back and he the golden staircase around you start to fade.

The last thing you see before the darkness is the stark, pure white of his eyes.

And when you wake up on the book pile, you're still thinking of him.


End file.
